Why NASA Is Stagnant

Thoughts from Bob Zubrin. I haven’t read yet, but I’ll have some of my own over there tomorrow, I think.

[Update a few minutes later]

OK, I read it. I disagree with his diagnosis of the problem, but I absolutely agree that we need to have a serious national discussion of why we have a government-funded human spaceflight program. That hasn’t happened in half a century. Until we do, we’ll continue to flounder, and be hostage to the whims of the rent seekers in Congress.

11 thoughts on “Why NASA Is Stagnant”

  1. Only NASA manned spaceflight is stagnant. Unmanned spaceflight has problems typical of a major bureaucracy but otherwise has seen major advancements and innovations decade over decade. The reason manned spaceflight is different, and stagnant, is simple: it was entangled deeply into the worst pork barrel congressional politics and it has been impossible to extract it from that morass. The entanglement was very intentional, part of a faustian bargain that LBJ made in order to make Apollo happen. And it worked, but it has saddled us with an otherwise non-functional manned spaceflight program for nearly half a century as a side effect.

    1. How is robotic spaceflight not stagnant? NASA has been collecting broad statistics, geological trivia and really neat maps of the solar system since the ’60s. While they’ve certainly gone farther and gotten heavier, all these probes haven’t achieved much more than taking pictures and poking at rocks, which is all they’ve ever done. Space exploration is as stagnant as ocean exploration, and for much the same reasons. If you want an example of active exploration, look at the oil and mining industries.

      1. Robotic spaceflight receives a fraction of the funding of manned spaceflight and yet has still managed to advance by leaps and bounds comparatively. In less than half a century since the advent of orbital rocketry NASA was able to send spacecraft to study every planet in our Solar System as well as every large moon. And NASA currently has satellites or survey missions operating on or around 3 non-Earth planets, soon to be 4, plus the largest dwarf planet in the inner Solar System. Not to mention having sent 4 rovers to Mars, 2 of which are still operating.

        In 1950 a book containing everything we knew about the planetary bodies of our Solar System besides Earth would either be filled with about half a dozen pages or be filled with a great deal of supposition and guesswork. Since then we’ve been able to add volumes upon volumes of knowledge about every planet. We’ve been able to fill in an incredible amount of detail on the geological history of Mars, for example. All of which we’ve done remotely with only a handful of probes. It’s remarkable how quickly and to what degree we’ve increased our knowledge of the planet Mars, let alone other planets, let alone the evolution, history, and composition of our Solar System in general year over year and decade over decade.

        And that is just planetary exploration. Unmanned spaceflight also includes space based astronomical observatories, which have revolutionized multiple scientific disciplines. They’ve served as absolutely invaluable tools in verifying/falsifying and refining cosmological models (the big bang model and the age of the Universe, the existence and composition of dark matter, the accelerating expansion of the Universe, and so on). COBE, WMAP, Chandra, Fermi, Kepler, Hubble, the observations made through these observatories form the foundation for modern theories of cosmology, planet formation, stellar evolution, and so on. Without those spacecraft our understanding of the Universe and its history would be vastly degraded.

        And it’s disingenuous to label it as “stagnant”. The advancements in capabilities, instrumentation, and innovations in mission design have been tremendous over time in unmanned spaceflight. Compared to some hypothetical perfect ideal we could certainly be doing better, but make no mistake, we’re still clipping along rather well. We don’t just send stationary landers to planets any more we send active vehicles like rovers. And we don’t just send a small suite of crude instruments like cameras and maybe a few basic research instruments, we send an incredible array of advanced sensors. Imaging spectrometers are now the norm on planetary probes. Curiosity/MSL has several different kinds of spectrometers for both in situ and remote observation as well as a full GC/MS system. You can denigrate what Curiosity does as just “taking pictures and poking at rocks” but the fact is that when you have the instrumentation that Curiosity does that activity allows you to determine the mineralogy and geological history of the environment you’re in to a degree that would require extensive hands on interrogation and study using teams of geologists. And that’s just one probe out of many. Sadly JWST has cannibalized the planetary science budget at NASA but even so it’s remarkable what they’ve been able to do.

        Today it’s accepted that a “normal” robotic spaceflight mission is either some sort of telescope that will revolutionize our understanding of the Universe or some sort of probe that will explore the outer reaches of the solar system or land on a comet or drive around on an alien planet for a decade or what-have-you. That norm is very much different from the expected norm not too long ago. That speaks to the degree to which robotic spaceflight continues to innovate, continues to make lasting advancements, and continues to push the boundaries of exploration.

        1. “That speaks to the degree to which robotic spaceflight continues to innovate, continues to make lasting advancements, and continues to push the boundaries of exploration.”

          It should be noted that NASA does not build the rockets that have launched almost every robotic spacecraft.
          Or the ability to get the various instruments into space is due to the US Military paying for development of launchers plus the commercial satellite market providing the commercial incentive to develop rockets.

          In terms of cost of manned human spaceflight, the majority of cost has been related to NASA insistence upon building manned launch vehicles for it’s exclusive use. And this has been a choice rather than something required for manned human spaceflight.
          One could make the point that one is dependent upon pilots to develop space vehicles. Or when developing an airplane one uses test pilots rather than some kind of robotic pilot. And if assume NASA is suppose to develop vehicles related to Space, that NASA would have to use human pilots in some parts of such development.

          As far as robotic innovation. We getting better computers and better communication system [internet[ and satellite market is constantly advancing technology. And this is largely related to why one has this robotic innovation. And humans have not had much “hardware improvement” in thousands years.

          Robotic spacecraft to travel to all the planets is useful in that they are disposal.
          One doesn’t need life support or return safely to Earth.
          But idea of needed a robotic mission to every rock in this solar system is insane.

          And if it was determined [somehow] that no humans could ever go to Mars, then it’s unlikely the US would be sending so many robotic spacecraft to Mars. Or if don’t care about human going somewhere, the Venus surface is probably more scientifically interesting, and as relevant to people living on Earth. And the Soviets were sending probes to Venus surface 50 years ago. Or Soviets were far more successful with Venus as compared to Mars- it’s easier.

          One could say without human spaceflight there would have been far less robotic missions. And I think one could say without the military need associated with the space environment, and the commercial need of satellite in Earth orbits, that NASA [if it still existed] would have about 1/10th of the budget of federal EPA [which btw, we should actually cancel and return EPA functions to being a matter that the individual States can manage.]

        2. No question unmanned exploration efforts have vastly increased our knowledge over the past 50 years, but to what end? If humans are never to live anywhere but Earth, what, exactly, is the point of accumulating the knowledge? Sadly, the only answer on offer from too many advocates of unmanned exploration boils down to providing research and publication opportunities for a tiny cadre of astronomers and astrophysicists. In what way is this materially different than the politically-driven pork now sustaining such centers of human exploration irrelevance as MSFC? The unmanned exploration people are jealous of the relative pittance they receive compared to the alleged human exploration community? The whining of less successful parasites does not change the fact that they are still parasites if there is never to be any benefit from their work beyond personal aggrandizement.

          I am more and more convinced that neither the manned nor unmanned “exploration” cadres at NASA will figure decisively in man’s future in space. It will be the engine of commercial exploitation that provides a sustainable and extensible base for significant future endeavors.

    2. Unmanned space exploration may not be as stagnant as manned. But consider this, why only one new visual light space telescope? What was so special about either the Hubble or James Webb space telescopes that they could only make one? Why only make one Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) or two Mars Exploration Rovers (MER)? There are so many categories of space exploration and science for which there are one or two operating spacecraft.

      The last time that NASA made more than two of any class of space vehicle or landing craft was in the late-1960s with the Lunar Surveyor and Orbiter programs (which sent 7 landers and 5 orbiters to the Moon). This incidentally was the last time that any unmanned deep space activity had near future benefit as far as NASA was concerned since the success of those missions was essential to the success of the Apollo program.

      For almost half a century, NASA has prioritized new technology development – technology development which can only apply in the near future to a small handful of similar space missions – over the actual science, exploration, or whatever that these spacecraft were supposed to do. That’s a straightforward political choice. Technology development results in money for NASA contractors and well-distributed constituents while space activities just result in a similar level of good press no matter how extensive the activity is. One Mars rover buys as much press as ten rovers or one hundred rovers do. I consider this a symptom of an unmanned space program that has long been stagnant.

      For example, the money spent on the James Webb space telescope could have instead gone to several replacements for the proven Hubble space telescope with years less delay. The money for the Mars Science Laboratory could have gone to half a dozen Mars Exploration Rovers which could have landed on Mars and made significant discoveries years before the Mars Science Laboratory ever launched.

      There are several related costs that are greatly increased by this choice of technology development over actual space activities. The obvious one is the above missed economy of scale. If we built ten of every spacecraft we make (most such spacecraft are valuable enough, and most have enough similar targets, that we could do the mission multiple times). For example, any of the gas giant orbiters (Galileo and Cassini, for example) could fly to all of the gas giants and both Trojan asteroid belts. That’s six targets with very similar maneuvering environments and targets. The Europa lander could be repurposed to land on dozens of possible asteroid and ice moon targets throughout the Solar System (most which are easier to reach than the surface of Europa). And there’s a vast number of potential targets for any group of space telescopes, easily enough to soak up the activities of a 100 such telescopes much less ten.

      And as a result, the considerable R&D costs per program could be split up over ten or so spacecraft instead of over one or two. We also would see some reduction in launch costs and operations costs (managing ten rovers or ten space telescopes is not ten times as expensive as managing one rover or space telescope) per spacecraft deployed.

      Second, it would result in more exploration and science per human lifespan. For example, the famous “labeled release” experiment of the Viking program, which found ambiguous chemical activity which could be associated with life (or with non-life chemical processes). Even now, almost 40 years later, that experiment has never been repeated. When important questions get ignored for a span of time almost as long as a scientist’s career, then that is a vast lost opportunity.

      Finally, it allows for more educated and focused R&D efforts. If the MSL had been developed after ten MERs had landed on Mars, then we would be much more knowledgeable about the issues of landing and deployment systems (including precision landing) and how to operate on the surface of Mars in a variety of Mars environments. Similarly, we’d have a far better idea of what a sample return mission or in the long term manned missions to Mars would need on the basis of our experience with plenty of MER and MSL missions. We’d know to a better degree what works and have more experience in producing those items.

      So I disagree. I think the stagnation that manifests so notably in the manned space program, also afflicts to a painful degree every aspect of NASA’s operations including their unmanned space program.

      1. In the early days of the robotic program there were a lot more launches and a lot more commonality among probes. Ranger, Surveyor, Mariner, Pioneer, etc. This allowed the per probe costs to be cheaper as a result. The only new program I can see which would profit from having multiple probes is mineral prospection of the asteroid belt, the Moon, or Mars. In the case of the Moon or Mars you could send teleoperated rovers to explore the surface.

  2. We haven’t and won’t have that discussion because space has been unimportant since it was a Cold War tool for JFK.

    Asking for such a discussion is a waste of time. The only solution is the commercial companies changing the fundamentals of spaceflight. After enough change, a place for some kind of discussion may open up.

    How many times do we have to go thru this? Rand, for me the 20th of July is a time of mourning for 45 lost years…

  3. The reason for difference of Apollo era, is everyone involved [all the bureaucracies] realized they had a shortage of time. And bureaucracies which consider that there is not a shortage of time, find things to do. And being idiots, what they find to do, waste not just their time, but everyone involved.

    A bandaid to this this is programs and targets [which tend to give the impressive there is some shortage of time] but these are not as good as having a real shortage of time. So, with Apollo you got beat the soviets to the moon or fail with your enterprise. Or in war with all it’s carnage, the reality is that speed is a necessity.
    In business it’s competition, no competition and one has no real sense of requiring thing be done.

    So in general, one is really screwed if one is largely dependent on government bureaucracies. Or socialism will always fail. And any effort to artifically generate a sense that there is a shortage of time, will be regarded as “fake”.

    So for Mars exploration, a well funded NASA, will not work. The nature of going to Mars is a slow activity, for everyone involved it will make watching grass grow, an exciting activity.
    So to explore Mars, one needs the element of competition as a means to add speed.
    If NASA starts a market for rocket fuel in space, by using depots, if NASA explores the Moon to find water depots, and if commerical lunar water occurs, than one will have the elements which would make a major Mars exploration program, work.

  4. … we need to have a serious national discussion of why we have a government-funded human spaceflight program.

    I suspect that many of your readers would find it easy to say why Americans should be in space: to explore, claim, colonize, and exploit the rest of the universe. But the people who make the decisions on NASA’s goals and funding are concerned with their own rice bowls.

    And God help anyone who prevents those rice bowls from being filled! I won’t be at all surprised of Congress and/or the Obama administration eventually put up as many roadblocks as they can to prevent SpaceX from succeeding in those goals … including making private spaceflight difficult or illegal, and barring American citizens from staking claims on the Moon, Mars, or asteroids.

    (I definitely disagree with Bob Zubrin on the value of the leadership by the “tough-minded previous administrator, Mike Griffin” though …)

Comments are closed.